Bergen Energi of Norway Plans to Join Britain's Electricity Exchange N2EX

Bergen Energi AS will join Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. and NordPool Spot AS’s N2EX power exchange in the U.K. to buy and sell electricity for British clients.

“We have started the process of applying to join N2EX,” Therese Gjerde, vice president and head of spot management at Bergen Energi said yesterday in a telephone interview from Bergen, Norway. The trading company will buy and sell power for users including industrial companies, she said.

N2EX is going head-to-head with Amsterdam-based APX BV and ICE Futures Europe to offer U.K. futures exchange-based power trading. The exchange had its first day-ahead auction of U.K. power in January and operates a market for electricity to be delivered within two weeks. British regulators are pushing exchange trading as a way to improve transparency, attract new entrants and boost competition in the power market.

Bergen Energi represents 30 percent of the members on Nordpool’s Nordic electricity market, Gjerde said. The company traded about 8 terawatt-hours of power in Britain last year through over-the-counter brokered markets. It trades about 18 terawatt-hours across European spot exchanges, Gjerde said. Most U.K. electricity is traded though over-the-counter markets.

Trading units of Centrica Plc, RWE AG, E.ON AG, Iberdrola SA, Scottish & Southern Energy Plc and Electricite de France SA, the U.K.’s six biggest utilities, are among 17 companies trading on N2EX, alongside Barclays Bank Plc, Bank of America Corp’s Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank AG.

Nord Pool Spot, based in Oslo, has operated power markets since 1993, when it opened for trading in Norway. Nasdaq OMX is the world’s biggest exchange company, operating in more than 50 countries.

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Airlie in London at cairlie@bloomberg.net

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